Not Quite Perfect (Oakland Hills Book 3)

by Gretchen Galway

  Perhaps it was a little more hers than his, actually. She’d taken over the second bedroom—with north-facing light—and converted it to an art studio. Stool loved the little patch of land they had off the back porch, chasing bumblebees he never caught around the lavender and agapanthus and howling every time a siren wailed in the distance, which in the city was fairly often.

  Tonight she was lying on the couch next to Zack, her legs over his lap, taking photographs of the ceiling with her phone. She’d decided that ceilings were very poorly represented in the arts. Theirs was particularly interesting, with an antique bronze chandelier retrofitted with LED bulbs, coved corners near the bay windows, and crown moulding from a more glamorous age.

  When she heard his indirect marriage proposal, she turned her head to see what he was watching on the TV that had inspired it.

  She sat up in a hurry. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Moby Dick?”

  “I’ve always loved the ocean,” he said. “And I love you, so it makes sense to put them together.”

  “You’re watching a black-and-white movie about an obsessive crazy guy killing a whale, and suddenly you’re thinking long-term?”

  He grinned at her.

  She whacked him in the shoulder. “How do you think this makes me feel?”

  “Wanted?”

  She tried to look serious. Failed. “Oh, totally,” she said, laughter bubbling out of her. She’d thought he’d propose in a predictably conventional way, such as on one knee at a fancy restaurant or during a walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.

  This was so much better. A lifetime of dick jokes was worth much, much more than any meal at a fancy restaurant.

  “Moby Dick puts you in the mood for love, this is what I’m learning,” she said.

  “My mother always swoons whenever Gregory Peck comes on the screen.”

  “Oh, oh, oh,” she said, clutching her stomach. She was laughing hard now. “You’ve brought your mother into it, too.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest, sinking lower into the couch. “Fine. We won’t get married on a boat.”

  “We won’t?”

  Shaking his head, he pointed the remote at the TV and raised the volume. The mid-century orchestra blared into the room.

  Not that she’d ever doubted him—not since she’d turned and seen him in the conference room at Fite and decided he was hers forever—but hearing him plan their commitment ceremony put a smile on her face.

  “I love boats,” she said, climbing into his lap and kissing his neck. She took another picture of the ceiling, getting some of his freshly buzzed scalp into the shot. The weekend before, they had visited his parents in Bakersfield; while he and his dad went to the barber, April bonded with his mother. Any cultural, religious, or style chasms between them were soon bridged by their mutual love of Zack, dogs, and living in the lovely state of California. April, it turned out, had been the answer to a prayer, even with her liberal politics, colorful language, and combat boots: she’d gotten Zack to move back home.

  Zack wrapped his arms around April while Captain Ahab bellowed his frustration at the whale, the sea, the universe.

  “I love you,” he said. He didn’t turn his head away from the TV, but his eyes were closed, and she felt the pulse at his throat accelerate under her lips.

  “I love you, too.” She tried to imagine wearing a wedding dress like Rose’s elegant gown and failed. She tried to imagine being a whirlwind mother like Bev with her own multimillion-dollar business and couldn’t picture that either. She knew she would spend the rest of her life with Zack, but she didn’t know what it was going to look like. She’d travel her own path, find her own way, dance to her own tune.

  Who said settling down was boring?

  Not the way she was going to do it.

  “I think a boat would be great,” she said.

  Author Note

  Thank you for reading!

  To get an email about new books and sales—and get a free short story!—please sign up at www.gretchengalway.com.

  And if you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review online. It’s ridiculously helpful.

  Thank you so much. Happy reading!

  www.facebook.com/AuthorGretchenGalway

  www.twitter.com/GretchenGalway

  www.GretchenGalway.com

  Also by Gretchen Galway

  More books in this series:

  LOVE HANDLES (Oakland Hills #1) — Liam and Bev

  THIS TIME NEXT DOOR (Oakland Hills #2) — Mark and Rose

  CAN’T STOP WANTING YOU (Oakland Hills Short Story - #2.5 in the timeline) (set at Liam and Bev’s wedding)

  Other books:

  THE SUPERMODEL’S BEST FRIEND

  DIVING IN

  ** Click here to visit Gretchen Galway’s Author Page on Amazon **

  * * *

  Read how Bev and Liam met in…

  LOVE HANDLES

  ©2011 Gretchen Galway

  The world of fitness apparel isn't ready for Beverly Lewis. She hates the gym, is nice to everybody, and shops at Ross Dress for Less. When she’s not teaching preschool, she’s wearing yoga pants… to nap in. So when she inherits her estranged grandfather’s fitness wear company in San Francisco, nobody expects her to keep it. Fite Fitness needs a heartless suit to save it from bankruptcy, not a thirty-year-old woman who cries when her students leave for kindergarten.

  Someone like Liam Johnson. A former Olympic swimmer, Liam is Fite’s executive vice president. Unlike Bev, he’s devoted his life to Fite’s success. Managing one little preschool teacher—and his attraction to her—shouldn’t be an issue. Right?

  But Bev’s tired of being underpaid and underrated, and she refuses to step aside as an obedient figurehead. To everyone’s shock and horror, she moves up to San Francisco, sets up an office, and dives into the business. Nothing—not mockery, not exercise, not sabotage, not a disastrously hot night with her aggravating VP—is going to scare her away.

  As Liam realizes she’s tougher than she looks, he discovers that losing Fite might not be nearly as bad as losing her…

  A story about the pursuit of love, happiness, and the perfect yoga pants, Love Handles will speak to anyone who's ever had to face what scares her most.

  * * *

  Excerpt of LOVE HANDLES

  by Gretchen Galway

  Chapter 1

  THE FUNERAL WAS MORE FUN than this, Bev thought, waiting in the lobby of her late grandfather’s fitness wear company. The young receptionist was on the phone and had been deliberately ignoring her since she came in. Maybe she can tell I got my suit at Ross Dress for Less.

  Bev glanced around the dim lobby, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, surprised Fite Fitness looked more like the waiting room for a used car dealership than an upscale fashion manufacturer. It even smelled stale, like yesterday’s lunch.

  “That piece-of-shit car,” the receptionist said. She wore a lopsided cordless headset over her skinny blonde braids but was speaking into a cell phone she had slipped under the earpiece. “I hate San Francisco. I just replaced those brakes like last year, and the prick’s like, ‘Oh, it’s your fault for braking too much.’ Like I should just crash into everybody. Stupid hills.”

  She doesn’t look old enough to drive, Bev thought, feeling ancient at thirty. She checked her watch again. Only a few hours until her flight home to LAX. “Excuse me,” she said, smiling broadly. “I’m Beverly Lewis.”

  The receptionist held up one hand, index finger erect, and kept talking.

  “I have an appointment with Richard,” Bev continued. “The CFO. It’s kind of—”

  The girl spun her chair around so that Bev was staring at the tangle of braids on the back of her head.

  “Important.” Her mother had warned her the fashion business was filled with self-absorbed, emotional people, but Bev was an expert—she worked with demanding four-year-olds every day. She just had to think strategy.

  Next to the desk, racks of
clothes were lined up like the understaffed dressing room of a department store. Curious, Bev stepped to the other side, slid the hangers apart, and ran her hands over the smooth Lycra and polyester. Track suits. T-shirts, yoga pants, running shorts. Cropped tanks with built-in bras.

  Poor man must have been senile, leaving his company to me. She was a preschool teacher with no muscle tone—which her grandfather would have known, if he’d ever met her. Shaking her head, Bev pulled out her cell phone and scrolled down to the number she’d got from the lawyer.

  The desk phone trilled. The receptionist let out a loud sigh, set down her cell, and realigned her headset. “Fite Fitness, this is Carrie.”

  “Hi, Carrie, this is Beverly Lewis, right next to you. I’m here to see Richard, the CFO.”

  Carrie jerked her head around and stared at Bev holding her phone.

  Bev smiled, trying not to laugh at the look on her face. “Ed Roche was my grandfather,” she said into the phone, since Carrie seemed to process better through it. “Could you please tell Richard I’m here?”

  The woman’s eyes widened. She nodded and swung back to the phone to dial. She mumbled something, dialed, mumbled again, then hung up.

  “Thanks,” Bev said, this time without the phone.

  “He didn’t pick up, but I left a message. You should have told me who you were.”

  “Sorry. Richard didn’t answer?”

  “I’m sure he’ll come out and get you. It’s kind of hard to find his office.” Carrie pinched her lips together again, this time with an apologetic look. “I’d get you something to drink, but we don’t have anything like that anymore.”

  “That’s okay, I’ve got my water bottle.” Bev pulled it out of her shoulder bag, waved at Carrie, and walked over to a lint-colored chair that may have been white when it was manufactured in the 1980s. She thought about the word Carrie had used—anymore—and wondered if business was as bad as it looked.

  Not her problem. Her aunt Ellen could figure out what to do with it; Bev’s life was hundreds of miles away.

  She sat down next to a dusty ficus, noticing the brown leaves littering the floor beneath it. She lifted her hand and caressed a crispy leaf with her thumb. “Poor thing. When’s the last time you had a drink?”

  She got up onto her knees and leaned over the back of the chair, pouring her Calistoga into the pot. Clouds of dust motes rose up around her head, glimmering in the shafts of light coming in from the street. She sneezed.

  “Did you lose something?”

  The man’s low voice made her flip around in surprise, hand over her mouth, fighting back another sneeze. Right behind her stood a muscular blond man in a tank top and shorts. She tilted her head up to gaze into his face, suddenly wishing she’d spent a little more on her outfit for the day. With a face that would impress even her Hollywood-executive relatives, the man was well over six feet tall, broad at the shoulder, narrow in the middle, and glistening all over—her classic nightmare.

  She realized she’d seen him at the funeral, though not dressed like this.

  “Thank you.” She maneuvered herself off her knees and onto her feet, trying to look graceful. He must just have had a lovely view of her big butt. Her face burning, she extended a hand. “I’m Beverly Lewis. Are you Richard?”

  His cheerfully sun-kissed hair didn’t suit the gloom of the rest of him. His workout clothes were slick and black, his mouth was a hard line, and his penetrating dark eyes made her feel as though he could see through her retinas into the soft, jiggly underbelly of her soul. Not to mention the rest of her.

  Why is he staring at me like that?

  “I’m Liam Johnson. Executive Vice President,” he said.

  He took her hand in his, enveloping it completely. Unlike many men shaking a woman’s hand, he exerted genuine pressure—as though he expected she was strong enough to take it, or didn’t care if she wasn’t. She squeezed back as hard as she could, secretly disappointed he didn’t flinch, then pulled free.

  He must have skipped the gathering at Ellen’s house, just as Bev and her mother had. To go running, apparently, from the looks of him—unlike Bev, who’d been eating a cheeseburger.

  “So, you’re the granddaughter,” he said. “Our new owner. What a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  The sarcasm in his voice made her stand up to her full five foot ten. She hadn’t expected a warm welcome, but the depth of hostility was a surprise. He probably was one of her aunt’s allies. “I didn’t know about his will until the day before yesterday.”

  “But you knew you had a grandfather. Funny I never saw you before now.”

  Her lips were tight over her teeth, holding up the smile she didn’t feel. “Perhaps you could help me find Richard so I can get on my way. I have a flight in a few hours.”

  That surprised him. He frowned. “Today? Where are you going?”

  “Orange County. I need to get home.”

  For a long moment he just stared. Then a corner of his mouth twisted. “Of course. Death can be such an inconvenience.”

  A chill settled over her. She studied him closer, trying to remember more of what she’d heard from her aunt that morning about the staff at the company. He must be the guy who grew up next door to her grandfather in Oakland. The protégé. Her grandfather’s death must have been a shock to him. “You’re the swimmer, aren’t you? He hired you right after the Olympics.”

  “I’m surprised you would know anything about what he did.”

  Ah. That was it. “It’s true we weren’t close,” she said. “But you were, weren’t you?”

  His jaw hardened. He shrugged.

  “I’d love to hear anything about him you might like to share,” she said. “Our branch of the family has been kind of estranged for a while.”

  “Oh?” A lot of unforgiving ice packed into one word.

  “Since before I was born,” she added. So lay off, dude.

  “Your loss.”

  Bev looked past him to one of the doors along the far wall, nodding in agreement. She’d done her best to chat with her infamous aunt Ellen over the past couple of days, but her mother still wasn’t talking to her—her only sibling—after thirty years. Not even at the funeral. It wasn’t right.

  “Perhaps we could continue this inside.” She looked down at his exercise clothes with a raised eyebrow. “Unless you’re too busy.”

  Smoothing the tank top over his chest, the thin fabric clinging to sweat and muscle like synthetic skin, he began to walk toward a doorway. “The administrative offices are back here.”

  “Great. Thank you.” She waved at the receptionist, but the young woman sat petrified and stared at Liam without blinking. No doubt the sporty ice cube was a difficult boss.

  He led her down a narrow, carpeted passageway with offices on one side, most of them empty. The shabby carpeting was brown with tan stripes worn down the middle from the tread of human feet. Pausing in a doorway, he looked over his shoulder at her. “I mistook you for Ellen at first. I thought she might have dropped her phone behind the chair.”

  Bev walked faster to catch up. “Some people say I look like her, but I think it’s just the black hair.” Aunt Ellen had the same pale skin, too, but their features were nothing alike. Ellen had a cold beauty Bev was happy to live without. It put people on edge, demanded attention, caused trouble.

  He ushered her into a dark room, slapping the wall to turn on the lights. She was trapped inside with him. His gaze fell down her body. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  She was annoyed with herself for feeling insulted. She lifted her chin and looked past him into the windowless office, noting floor-to-ceiling metal grids bolted to the walls holding up clothes and white foam presentation boards, sketches, magazines. “This isn’t Richard’s office, is it?”

  “It’s mine.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the sheen of perspiration still visible on his skin.

  “I need to talk to Richard.”

  “He’s n
ot nearly as important around here as I am.” He walked over to his desk and sat behind it. “Talk to me.”

  She snorted. “I’m sure you are very important, Liam. Nevertheless—”

  “You don’t understand. Richard is just an accountant.”

  “And you don't understand. He has papers for me to sign.”

  Liam froze. His eyes flickered with an emotion she couldn’t read. “Papers.” His voice dropped. “What papers?”

  Uncomfortable with the visible clenching of his classic jaw, she considered fleeing back to the lobby, but as a top executive he probably deserved to hear it from her. She sank down to the edge of a chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Ellen had them prepare some legal stuff to cut me loose. Right now you guys need my permission for everything.”

  “Cut loose? You can’t possibly sign anything so soon.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not making any changes. I’m handing it over to Ellen. They just need my signature.”

  “Not Ellen. You don’t understand. You can’t.”

  “Everyone knew she would inherit the business. She should.” Though her mother had liked the idea of Ellen being disappointed for once, after years of being the favorite daughter, the one who got all of Daddy’s love, attention, and money.